Obama: We've got 'very good leads' on Benghazi

12/30/12 9:30 AM EST

President Barack Obama says the FBI investigation of the Benghazi attack is ongoing, but investigators have "some very good leads."

"With respect to who carried it out, that's an ongoing investigation. The FBI has sent individuals to Libya repeatedly," the president said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "We have some very good leads, but this is not something that I'm going to be at liberty to talk about right now."

Obama praised the independent review of the State Department and pledged to institute their recommendations. And he noted the lapses found were unintentional but "sloppy."

"My message to the State Department has been very simple, and that is we're going to solve this," he said. "We're not going to be defensive about it. We're not going to pretend that this was not a problem. This was a huge problem."

"You read the report and it confirms what we had already seen based on some of our internal reviews," he added, "there was just some sloppiness, not intentional, in terms of how we secure embassies in areas where you essentially don't have governments that have a lot of capacity to protect those embassies."